MORNING
A full evening on the new Tascam recorder taught me to avoid the on-board editing features. Besides, I feel if a person cannot play through an entire tune right, why are they recording it? Talent cannot be produced or reproduced in a studio. That’s why a lot of indie (independent) music sounds like a string of corrected mistakes. It is basically a Boss recorder with an SD disk (tard-card).
No matter how you slice it, these are still the same family of single-track recorders. The Tascam can record two, but that’s a joke. If the entire band can’t be miked and recorded synergistically, you will never get anything but that shallow and layered indie sound.
Can you imagine a Tascam-Boss concert? First the drum comes up and plays the song solo. Then he vacates and the guitar player solos. Then the bassist. Somebody should inform these companies that is not how music is created, but I suspect the bums already know that.
What is the name of that term for marketing by degrees? Where the manufacture won’t release a new product until his [existing] inventory of junk is sold. All makers of these “pocket studio” machines are alike this aspect, how do you spell “c-o-l-l-u-s-i-o-n”? I doubt many people ever use all the bells and whistles built into these recorders. The factory would do a better job using the resources to add more input jacks.
The unit is also geared toward the guitar player. Built-in click tracks, tuner, this kind of nonsense because you just never know when you’ll have your Clapton moment. It will record one mic and one guitar simultaneously, but every other instrument has to be separately added. Hardly the band sound but then, we now have an entire generation raised on the bland clatter of layered recordings. They have been trained to prefer shallow.
Worst feature of these recorders? The music cannot be exported in an editable format. Whether one track or the whole song, you must convert the file to WAV to read it on a computer. WManipulatingWAV files is all or nothing. The Tascam LED screen is so tiny, I pity the soundman who tries to use it to get any real work done.
The manual is poorly written at the advanced chapters where you need the most help. It keeps saying you “can” do something without giving directions. All in all, the unit does what it says. Even if it doesn’t say it very clearly.
NOON
I did more recording. My early experience was with a rich kid I knew who had a studio at his house. It was fun but nothing ever came of it. There are odd photos around of me at the control panel. But I was never a recording type, I’m a performer. Lineham. Bob Lineham. That was the name of the rich kid. His parents owned a farm on the edge of town. When the town became a city, they got themselves very, very, very rich.
There is a similar arrangement in Florida on an Island called Biscayne. The toll bridge to the island is in private hands. But hey, it prevents eminent domain fiascos like in downtown Hollywood.
I watched the movie “Mars”, this time online. It is better than at the movies since I could stop it when things got too anthropomorphic aor mushy. So this is actually my third day of watching it and he still hasn’t done the wild thing. Most innovative character is that lizard dog that can go 0-60 faster than a married woman with a credit card. These older sci-fi movies raise a lot of questions. Like how do these heroes spontaneously know how to kiss a Martian woman? And, ahem, where?
But always remember, you budding John Carters, Hollywood alien women are always as childish and indecisive and neurotic and spinny as Earth women. Martian as they are supposed to be, they’ve learned constantly push the limits of what they can get away with. How, the more clever of you ask, do I know this? Easy. My ex-wife was NOT like that. In fact, she had this little five minute act where she pretend to be that way to remind me of how good I had it. Put another way, my wife showed me repeatedly how the way most adult women behave is play-acting that can be copied as a joke.
The most important thing she taught me was that so-called women’s intuition is nothing more than an a I-told-you-so attitude. Constantly predict failure and of course you’ll appear psychic to the lower orders.
EVENING
Personally, I can tell you acting stereotype makes people put down their guards. But that's another story. How about these things called "self-guided tours"? WTF is that? Isn't that just a tour? Anyway, that's what I thought until I discovered in the state of Georgia, self-guided means there is an admission fee.
So here is a map of stereotype America. Enjoy.
ADDENDUM
I found some other usage for the Tascam that utilizes the track by track feature. What you do is use an excellent app like Audacity (the older versions are often better than the post-Vista releases). Use Audacity to open your desired music, normally an MP3. Then export it with the following settings. WAV file at 16-bit PCM and 44.1kHz sampling. You MUST use this setting or the Tascam will balk.
All the conversions will be done during the export, Audacity is automatic about this. You may be tempted to format the file first, then export it, but that is another Audacity step that is not necessary and is just one more thing to remember. In this instance, use the easy way I’ve described and already tested for you.
You export this WAV file from Audacity to your hard drive, not to the Tascam card. I suggest you open a directory file for nothing but these files and always use it. Why? Because it turns out better to remove the SD card from the Tascam and slip it into your computer card reader. Then you drag to copy the file onto the SD card into the folder called WAVE. You see what I’m cautious about? Don’t get in the foolish habit of renaming files or folders after they are on an SD card. Or you will be sorry.
You could, of course, do all this file juggling by using the USB cable that comes with the Tascam. But not only do you have to keep the cable handy, you will find that using it disables the Tascam functions and when you remove the USB cable after you are done, it reboots the Tascam. This can be maddening. In all, the USB cable is more trouble than it is worth.
Copy this new WAV to your Tascam card. At this point, it gets a bit tricky. Don’t proceed until you create a new blank song on the Tascam. Then use the Tascam import menu to copy your WAV file to channels 7/8. You need both tracks because we shall assume your original file was stereo. At this point you’ll need some advice instead of instructions.
Advice, unless you are absolutely certain you know better, never record anything on channel 7. You will regret it if you don’t always leave one channel free, and the arbitrary choice is 7, sometimes 6. I have no idea why this is. However, since in this special case, you want to use channel 8 and the tracks must be paired, so you will use channel 7 and 8 as left and right stereo. In my opinion, reputable manufacturers would not create this bottleneck. Now back to the next step.
Once you have the file on tracks/channels 7 and 8, you can use it for any manner of recording. My motive was to record the bass lines I play on channel 4. When I have a bass line good for learning or demo, I erase the backing music and make a master bass line. For consistency, you should always put the vocals on channels 1 and 2, the guitar on channel 3, bass channel 4, keys 5, other 6. I suspect channel 1 is better built that the others. QED.
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